As mentioned in my previous post, anticipation is building regarding the launch of VMware's new flagship product vSphere (aka VI4).
During the buildup, I thought it prudent to answer a question that has been asked of me multiple times.

VCP's on VI3 will need to recertify to keep VCP status on vSphere which is to be expected.
Lets take a look at VCP certification history tracks and see if we can relate it to vSphere.

In particular, if you were a VCP on VI2, you needed to sit an exam to recertify your VCP for VI3.
Expect a similar situation with vSphere, except for the fact that you *MAY* have to sit an accelerator course to achieve to VCP upgrade.
By accelerator course I mean a shortened 2 day "whats new and different course"

vSphere is a product that is immensely powerful and capable, as were previous versions of virtual infrastructure. I have raised concerns before around the power of the product set and a users ability to create disasterous situations if they did not understand or were not careful enough when working with the product set, this still remains a concern but with application of best practice and the inbuilt mechanisms this risk is lessened significantly. The beauty of vSphere lies in the fact that although the product is a "NEW" product, the ability to use the product set will not be hard to use or difficult to ramp up to from previous versions of VMware Infrastructure.

The launch of vSphere is a huge event, and I for one will be waiting for the information overload after the launch.

Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure that you have heard about vSphere aka VI4. VMware's is launching vSphere tomorrow and is quoting the event as "An exclusive peek at how VMware is bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes".

Blogs and twitter have been chatting about it for a while, I have remained quiet for a reason and that reason is that it is under NDA.
What is public knowledge is the impact it is going to have on Virtualisation as we know it which is going to be HUGE.
Twitter is going to go into meltdown.....

The event is scheduled to run via simulcast on the 21st of April @ 9am PDT, which means for most of Australia (syd+mel) it is actually going to be early morning wednesday 22nd, 2am to be precise.
Trust me when I say that you really need to be watch the launch or at least a replay of it.

We should also be clear about what the launch is, the launch is the release of the product information and featureset globally, not the actual public availability, known in the industry as GA.
A large number of people are very excited about the opportunity to access vSphere early on wednesday and that opportunity will not present itself unless you are on the beta program and in that case have access to it already.

GA is suggested to be a month or two after the actual "launch" of vSphere.

You can register here, and the event description is :

 "Join us for an exclusive peek at how VMware is bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes.

VMware is once again leading the virtualization industry by bringing cloud computing to the datacenter. Transform your IT infrastructure into a private cloud—a collection of internal clouds federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service.

On April 21, 2009, we'll be unveiling how VMware is taking IT to new heights of efficiency, choice and control through service-level automation—dramatically reducing capital and operating costs and maximizing IT efficiency—with the freedom to choose any application, OS, or hardware.

Join Paul Maritz, President and CEO of VMware, as he and other VMware leaders officially unveil the next generation of virtualization technology from VMware.

Don’t miss your chance to participate in one of the most groundbreaking events this year.  "